SeanReadsTheNews.com is not above pandering and click-baiting, so on Oscar weekend, we have a two-link blog on business news covering the Academy Award Ceremony.
My old friend Virginia Postrel, currently writing a column for Bloomberg News because that's who you hire when you launch a new product and want someone to read it, writes about how to save the Oscars in her column today.
Getting to the heart of the business problem facing the broadcast, Virginia notes that the voters' interests aren't aligned with those of the audience.
As Hollywood historian Neal Gabler notes, however, Academy voters don’t like the movies that bring in the bucks, an attitude that seems to have intensified in recent years. “They are using the Oscars,” he suggests, “to stage a small protest against the sorts of movies they feel we the audience sadistically forces them to make.” The audience, in turn, stages its own protest by staying away -- or watching the show only for the evening gowns.
She also subtly punctures that preening by noting that the most highly rated recent broadcast was 2010, when box-office smashes like Avatar, The Blind Side and Up were nominated but a lesser performer, The Hurt Locker, won. If you're an Academy voter and can't tell that Up was a superior movie to The Hurt Locker, you shouldn't be looking down at anyone else's critical facilities.
She also flagged in her Facebook account this great article by Russ Britt of MarketWatch on how an Oscar nomination has become a negative signal to the ticket-buying public.
It used to be that difficult to market films got a nice bump from being Oscar-nominated, now the contempt the voters show for the audience has been priced in, and it isn't working any longer.
According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the bounce in box-office receipts after the Oscar nominations were announced Jan. 24 was the eighth worst in the last 30 years. The nominees still in theaters have gotten a 13% bonus thus far. The best year was 1989, when nominees tacked on 38% of their receipts between the nominations and the ceremony.
Hard to argue with that. Why take advice from people who can't tell that Up was a better movie than The Hurt Locker (or who thought Avatar deserved a nomination at all)?
The larger business journalism point here is that when your product is structured in a way that doesn't engage your buying audience it will fail even if, like the Oscars, it has every reason to succeed.
Most of Virginia's column was comprised of suggestions for increasing the immediacy of the Award Ceremony, such as limiting the voting to the audience in the room and having it take place in real time after each movie gets a speech in support of its merits.
She's arguing that engagement is key - wonder if anyone is listening?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/save-oscars-with-live-voting-and-hindsight-commentary-by-virginia-postrel.html